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Presenter: The patient is a woman of forty who dresses as if she were much younger. She is French and speaks Portuguese with a strong accent. She has been in analysis with me for only two months, four times a week, but consulted me from time to time for about a year before that. When she first came for an interview she was very excited and happy because I had an hour to spare. Just before starting analysis she went to Europe on holiday. In London, amongst the crowds, she suddenly felt ill and frightened of being alone, frightened of something happening to her with no one to turn to.
Bion: This is a fundamental point. You can be ‘all alone’ with yourself; ‘all alone’ with your analyst; ‘all alone’ in a crowd of people in London. It is a curious combination: being all alone and dependent on people and things not you. We seem to be the kind of animal that has to have a society; we depend on it and are all alone at the same time. It is true at the age of forty, at the age of four, and at the age of nought.
P: The need always remains with us?
B: I think so. It is something to which the analyst tries to introduce the patient who has either forgotten it or has never been conscious of it. It is like having the experience but never being aware of it.
P: Her father died four years ago and her mother one year ago. She is an only child and had lived with her parents for some years prior to their deaths. She told me that since her mother's death she has kept her parents' bedroom intact; she has never moved any clothes, furniture, ornaments or photographs.
B: The advantage of ‘the facts’ is that they make it easier to talk about the furniture of the room than the furniture of her mind or character. But it is a step in that direction; it is a way of ‘getting
to know’ who she is. It is a sort of ‘transient’ relationship; a sort of ‘transference’. It is felt to be more bearable to know your self than to be ignorant of your self. But on the way to knowing her self it is easier for this